Assessing mammal biodiversity in forest fragments of the Asian tropics

Department: University of Delaware, Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology

Publisher: University of Delaware

Date Issued: 2016

Abstract: Deforestation of tropical rainforests is one of the greatest current threats to biodiversity. Asian mammals have been particularly threatened by land use change, yet we lack basic information about many species. This lack of information is a major obstacle to effective conservation, and is driven in part by the high cost and effort required to survey tropical mammals. In the first chapter of this thesis, we used camera traps to investigate the mammalian use of five small forest fragments outside Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia, and compared it to camera trapping which was carried out inside the national park. We found that a significant number of forest species were utilizing the fragments, including endangered species such as the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica) and the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae). The high level of biodiversity found in these fragments suggests that these areas may be of conservation importance, and may increase connectivity across the landscape. In the second chapter of this thesis, we addressed the difficulties of tropical mammal surveys by examining a novel survey technique: genetic sequencing of leech blood meals. We used Sanger sequencing of the 16s rRNA gene to identify recent mammal host species of leeches collected from four forest patches in northeast Bangladesh. We then compared these data to camera trap data obtained from the same locations. We identified a greater number of species in the camera traps than in the leeches; however, leeches may be able to provide a more precise picture of biodiversity in the study area. After comparing the effort, cost, and power associated with each method, both methods have pros and cons. Used together, these methods may provide a more complete monitoring tool for mammal biodiversity in tropical rainforests.